Gippsland’s surest bets of attracting government funding have been and signed off by the region’s leaders, in a document being circulated among regional development funding departments.
The Gippsland Region Priority Areas and Projects document, prepared by Regional Development Australia Gippsland, Gippsland Local Government Network and the Committee for Gippsland, identifies “shovel ready” infrastructure projects designed to gain maximum traction in state and federal government budgetary consideration processes.
RDA Gippsland chair Richard Elkington said the document created a realistic vision of what infrastructure projects were likely to be implemented in the region by 2022.
Mr Elkington said while the document was “about putting a claim on existing programs”, due to the highly completive and structured funding application processes required by governments, presenting a unified voice from the region was paramount.
“We are now the only region in Victoria that’s got the one plan; every other region of Victoria has multiple plans for all sorts of reasons, but now we certainly say we have the one, and it’s exciting.”
Mr Elkington said during an RDA meeting with Latrobe City Council in November, it was recognised there was “serious effort” going into developing the region’s potential projects, although it was decided Gippsland was not being “assertive as a region”.
“That could have ended up again with governments deciding what isn’t good for us again,” he said.
The document will be available this week on the GLGN website,
www.glgn.com.au
